Entries this day: Janette_Japanese_Class Job_interview My_coaster_writeup-to_be_continued Work all_night_party

Janette Japanese Class

11:02am JST Friday 23 January 2004

I'm beside janette who is studying with Ayana. janette now has covered (and nearly learned) all the shit that I have learned. She blew me (and Ayana) away by knowing the TE form of conjugations last week... and this week, though it's a packed lesson, Ayana will have presented janette with the most advanced stuff that I've learned.

It's a little like, dammmmm how am I so slow? But I think it's really that janette has just been working her ass off. That's sweet; I'm really pleased slash impressed with her.

Job interview

11:05am JST Friday 23 January 2004

I saw a strange ad on the train today; one that had a book with really strange English wording on it: "Hello, Jane, what is the book that you are reading?" "Hello, John, I am reading the book of Arnold Whatsisname in order to write a paper of it." or some shit like that, and on the page on which it's written, is a picture of a young man and woman and then scribbling on the page, little doodles of graffitti including a disco light near the letters DISCO of "Discover" etc etc.

At the bottom of the page, was katakana that I slowly read:

マンツーマン英語

"ma n tsu ma n eigo"

"mantsu man eigo"

Man to man English!

So I wrote down the number and called them during janette's lesson. I have an interview with them on Tuesday 10 February at 10 am.

My coaster writeup to be continued

11:18am JST Friday 23 January 2004

I got a copy of ECC's First Drop magazine because two of my pictures of Fujikyu Highland's Hamu Hamu Kingdom coaster were included in the issue. Nice. I'm going to send a "Ride Comment" to the magazine, along with pics of coasters. I'll write about Dodonpa first.

(last week with Morag, writing this was my homework for tonight. I don't know if we will meet or not, but we might.)

I moved to Tokyo Japan last year and have visited five of the coaster
parks.  Tokyo's parks are quite small compared to what I'm used to in
the US.

Hmmm didn't get very far.

Work

9:28pm JST Friday 23 January 2004

As I came in to work today, Hiroko gave me a book that Miho gave to me!! Wow wow wow! That's actually two things she has given me. One is a little charm thing from her dad's shrine, and this is a book on the history of Japan. In Japanese *and* in English. That is completely sweet.

Work went pretty smoothly today; students seemed pretty pleased with the lessons, and I was generally pleased with the lessons and everyone was happy.

I tried desperately to find out what makes the statue happy, but I couldn't find anything that seemed to excite her. She was just like, "I watch TV" and she told me when she calls her friends and they ask her what she does she would say she's been watching TV. I gave her homework: to ride her bike for an hour and tell the next class about it.

I had Yuki, Xian, and Toshi in my first class; they were in one of my last classes yesterday. We laughed about that a bit, and Toshi used some of the language from yesterday's class (awesome (That's not the language; that's what using the language (reverse tag questions (e.g. "aren't you a genius?")) was. )) in today's class. I was able to encourage Xian to reveal an awesome talent of hers; she wrote some stuff when she was little that was so money that her dad sent it to a newspaper for publishing.

Kathy taught me some Chinese today; I can count to 10 and say my name is Rob, and thank you and "no worries mate"

all night party

5:11am JST Saturday 24 January 2004

We're on the train now after having spent the night at La Fabrique (backwards F) dancing and such. Some coupling occurred, and Clayton did some funky sexy dancing, somehow temporarily winning the hearts of millions of women around him.

I was surprised to see やすこ there, who I met as Peter's girlfriend, ex Nova student. So, yes; she's an ex-student, but how did she get into the AT's group of friends?

janette and I boogied down together and apart.

A couple of times, a circle formed around a guy who had been DJing; his feet are pretty speedy. One of those times, I spent some time in the middle of the circle. My feet were pretty speedy as well. One guy kinda patted me on the shoulder when I exited the circle. Nice.

My camera battery didn't quite last the night.

Neither did I.

Upstairs, I slept about an hour while the gang was flocked around the tables.

5:27am

Sumika got off the train just now.

Carla goes "see you in an hour!"

5:28am

"When it's time to wake up, let's all call someone. Everyone call somebody."

[Ring]

"Lyle. Not yet."

"I was practicing."

- - - -

Before the party, I went to Cinecitta where I had emailed janette to meet me. Oh; I had the computer; she couldn't have checked her email. D'oh! So I called her and asked her to meet me at Shibuya. Cool thing is she was train-competent enough to change to the fastest train at Jiyogaoka station. Awesome.

- - - -

In Shibuya, I happened to see Clayton out by Hachiko; we joined them and waited for Carla et al. Ate at the club, thereby bypassing the 3000 yen cover.